Food pro­duc­tion and re­cy­cling are but on­ly two of the busi­ness­es start­ed by en­tre­pre­neurs with as­sis­tance from the Na­tion­al In­te­grat­ed Busi­ness In­cu­ba­tor Sys­tem (IBIS).Speak­ing at the Oc­to­ber 2011 launch, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said IBIS is a vi­able mech­a­nism for new and ad­vanced op­por­tu­ni­ties for wealth cre­ation and pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion.

"From an en­tre­pre­neur­ial per­spec­tive, the in­tro­duc­tion of IBIS comes at a time when our coun­try is in need of an in­creased en­tre­pre­neur­ship dri­ve.""I be­lieve that en­tre­pre­neurs are vi­sion­ar­ies. They seize op­por­tu­ni­ties. They ob­serve. They lis­ten. They don't take any­thing for grant­ed and they are not afraid to act."

Man­aged by the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, IBIS has dis­bursed loans amount­ing to $31.4 mil­lion with 62 grad­u­ates spread across sev­er­al busi­ness in­cu­ba­tors, said Michael Gor­don, man­ag­er, En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Di­vi­sion, Min­istry of Labour.Gor­don said IBIS ob­tains fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment and has spent $16 mil­lion since its launch."The in­tent is while they (en­tre­pre­neurs) are grow­ing their busi­ness, we con­tin­ue to pro­vide the sup­port and help them re­solve their is­sues so over time, they would get the ex­pe­ri­ence of run­ning their busi­ness­es, but al­so gain from the ex­per­tise from those who would have al­ready been in the pro­gramme," he said.There are two types of pro­grammes in the in­cu­ba­tor sys­tem. One is the com­mu­ni­ty-based in­cu­ba­tors, which is en­tre­pre­neur­ship at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

The sec­ond is the is the com­mer­cial in­cu­ba­tor where "there is a greater em­pha­sis on the high val­ue/prof­it busi­ness ideas which can cre­ate prod­ucts for ex­port."In oth­er words, we fo­cus on in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness in the com­mer­cial in­cu­ba­tors. We have one com­mer­cial in­cu­ba­tor we are work­ing with right now. Ac­tu­al­ly, we are start­ing one with the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness."An­oth­er in­cu­ba­tor be­ing looked at is the Biz Boost­er."They would be iden­ti­fy­ing those very in­no­v­a­tive ex­port po­ten­tial clients, fo­cus them, and help them to ex­pand and grow."The high­est amount of fund­ing a busi­ness en­ti­ty can ob­tain is $100,000 in loans with a pay­back pe­ri­od of ten years, de­pend­ing on the project."It is re­al­ly in­tend­ed on pro­vid­ing them with some kind of foun­da­tion that they re­quire and to have it run­ning suc­cess­ful­ly. The fo­cus is more on look­ing at the prod­uct and the busi­ness idea.In­cu­ba­tors are soon to start in the Laven­tille, Barataria/San Juan ar­eas, Diego Mar­tin, Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va and Point Fortin. (Nadaleen Singh)